Wednesday April 22nd was the first day Ankarlo came back on the air after the speed camera shooting/murder that occurred on April 19th. According to someone who heard the show that morning, Ankarlo apparently went overboard in his condemnation of DeStories (the speed cam killer) and allegedly urged people with marginal mental health to take their own life.

Not very long after this on-air rant, Ankarlo was pulled off mid-program supposedly because he was not feeling well. His producer, Rob Hunter, had to sit in for him while Kid was called in.

Regarding Ankarlo’s health, he has been recovering from a concussion that he suffered in a car accident earlier in April. Was this the reason he did not finish the show that day, or could it have been the management at KTAR finally coming to their senses about Ankarlo’s maniacal rants? Time will tell. Ankarlo has not been back on the air since then.

The absurd thing is that Ankarlo’s reaction to the news of DeStories killing a speed cam worker (which could have been partly a result of Ankarlo’s indirectly encouraging people to target shoot at speed cams) was to then to encourage people who are mentally unstable (like DeStories) to commit suicide. What’s next? After some unstable people decide to kill themselves, will Ankarlo then come on the air to urge people to burn down the doctors’ houses that were caring for the unstable people? This might not ever end.

Again, does Ankarlo or KTAR have any responsibility for the speech they produce?

On Sunday April 19th, Tom DeStories shot and killed a Redflex photo radar worker as he sat in his van monitoring speed cameras along the Loop 101 in Phoenix. One of the murderer’s former coworkers said that DeStories didn’t like the idea of photo radar and even bragged about cheating the cameras, according to a report on KPHO.

What could have led someone to do something like this? If you listen to talk-radio here in Phoenix, you might have an idea. There is one station and one person on that station that comes to mind when I thought of who has been leading the charge against the speed cams and fanning the flames of vigilantism: Darrell Ankarlo on KTAR. Not only has Ankarlo ranted about it countless times on his daily radio show, but he has blogged about it and written articles about it Phoenix Magazine.

Take Ankarlo’s Jan 2009 article titled “If I Were King”. Among other things he would do if he were king, he states:

All speed cameras in the state will be chopped down and abolished forthright, and any governor using this wicked taxing device shall be impeached and forevermore banished to Yuma.

Let’s first get past the insult to people living in Yuma. He chooses some interesting words here. Ankarlo says the cameras should be “chopped” down. Like the Travis Townsend did in Dec 2008 with the axe? Doesn’t sound like he’s discouraging that type of behavior here. And he says that they (the cameras) are “wicked”. Wicked as in evil? I suppose we should be afraid , then.

What fascinates me is that we’ve seen only a few instances of vandalism related to these multi-eyed monsters

More fear here, of course. But also another pass on condemning the acts of vandalism against the speed cameras. At the very end of the article, after giving multiple ideas on how to circumvent the speed cameras, Ankarlo adds:

E-mail me with other proven ideas, and I’ll use them for an upcoming column or radio show. Until then, get mad, and do something (legally) to get your freedom back.

If it already wasn’t obvious from his radio rants, now he tells us directly that his goal is to get us mad over the speed cameras…and for us to do something about it once we get mad…legally, of course. I have to wonder if it was the Phoenix Magazine editor who added the “(legally)” disclaimer. Bottom line is that after demonizing the speed camera idea by calling them wicked and by implying that our freedom has been taken from us (don’t forget the lack of condemnation of the previous vandalism)…we’re supposed to get angry and go out to do something (legally). Wink, wink…got it.

I’ll spare the audio clips this time, since there are so many. To sum up his radio rants on the speed cams, he has on three occasions compared to their use here in Phoenix to Hitler’s Nazi Germany. He even encouraged people to speed past the cameras and to send in a copy of their ticket to his show. Further, he said it dehumanizes us and that they would lead to socialism. Socialism? Not sure where that came from. It’s really bad when, even if you buy into Ankarlo’s bizarro logic, some things still seem random.

Perhaps the most blatant encouragement Ankarlo gave to people thinking of acts of speed cam vigilantism was in one of his blog posts titled “We Can Kill Them!”. Interesting title, right? Here’s the loony part:

Speed cams actually got their American start in Texas decades ago. They were removed after proud Texans grabbed their guns and went target shooting. Such an uprising won’t be necessary here if we kill them via our political opportunities first.

So was Destories just being a “proud Arizonan” that Sunday night when he shot at the Redflex van killing Doug Georgianni? Did he think he was justly fighting the rise of a Nazi-like police state here in Phoenix as Ankarlo described?

What responsibilities does someone like Ankarlo have regarding encouraging people to grab their guns to do something about their “freedoms” that have been “stolen” from them by the speed cameras? Does KTAR and Phoenix Magazine bare any responsibility for giving him the platform to make such remarks? How about the sponsors that advertise during Ankarlo’s show?

UPDATE: KTAR via Twitter just 2 days after the speed cam murder:

So Kid, who was in for Ankarlo, seems to be excusing the shooting. We can’t know for sure because the audio is not available for that day. But this is what someone at KTAR (Russ Hill?) seems to be implying with this Twitter message.

UPDATE: A day before my post, Lt. Warriner of DPS said this:

Because of (critics’) vocalness, you could almost say they’ve led to this, too – because of their protests, the encouragement of people to strike out,” he said.

From December 2008 to January 2009, Israel pounded the Gaza Strip which is one of the most heavily populated areas on the planet. About 1300 people were killed in Gaza. Of which about 300-400 were children. Amazingly, some of the reports and pictures made it through our media-sanitization filter.

Usually people are horrified by seeing children with parts of their heads missing. But not Rob Hunter (producer of Ankarlo Mornings on KTAR). Instead, his reaction was to post about 30 pictures of Palestinian children in military fatigues carrying (fake?) guns. He posted this on Ankarlo’s blog under the title “Palestinian images they don’t show you”. Apparently, this is Rob’s attempt to justify the killing of children.

Here’s the screenshot from Jan 2009. Rob’s link is the second from the bottom.

My only conclusion is to believe that Rob does not see the people of Gaza as humans. Does he think that this was a grass-roots movement of terrorist-toddlers? Isn’t it obvious that there were some crazy parents who put their kids up to this? I don’t see why those kids’ deaths were any less of a tragedy because of some parents’ decisions.

You can’t have a right-wing nut job without some gay bashing every now and then, right? For those that don’t know, Ankarlo is a deeply serious Christianist. That’s my analysis, anyway. Yes, there’s a difference between a Christian and a Christianist. Just as there’s a difference between patriotism and jingoism. From what I’ve gathered by painfully listening to the show for too long is that Ankarlo’s problem with homosexuals and gay marriage seems to be based on his fundamentalist beliefs, as you’ll hear from the first clip.

This rant (from 2-23-09) was sparked by Ankarlo’s watching the Academy Awards:

If you’re gay, I don’t care. You keep your life to yourself, I’ll keep my life to myself. If you let spill out of your house into the marketplace, then we’re gonna have conversations.

Too funny. The “marketplace”? Does he mean like Safeway or Fry’s? And his threat was to have “conversations” with them. Sounded like he actually wanted to say something else.

Near last Halloween (from 10-27-08), there was a story about a college kid (Chad) who hung a Sarah Palin effigy as part of a Halloween gag. This got Ankarlo pissed enough to make some pretty nasty statements.

I don’t want to draw any conclusions, but he sounds gay. Can I just say that for a second? The guy sounds a little…on the other team. Can I say it that way? LET’S HANG A GAY GUY! I got an idea, Chad, I’m gonna put up a gay guy…dead…in my front yard.

In 2008 after California’s Prop 8 passed which changed the state Constitution to take away same-sex couples’ rights to marry, there was an idea by some to “call in gay” to show how much the country relies on gays/lesbians. But Big Boss Man Ankarlo would have none of it (from 12-9-08):

I’m just telling you straight out. If I run a business and you call in gay…if you call in sick on Wednesday and I know that you’re gay, or I know that you hang out with gay people, or I know you feel sorry for the Prop 8 thing not passing there in California, [then] I’m putting you on the hit list. You will be fired!

I’m surprised he didn’t go further. What if they called in sick and their Senator is Larry Craig? Or what if they used to attend Ted Haggard’s church? Would you still fire them, Mr Ankarlo?

On the same topic, one of KTAR’s listeners came up with another idea to make a slightly different point to homosexuals. And Ankarlo liked it enough to read on the air (from 12-9-08):

How about all the straight people…they don’t give blood on one day. All the straight people, just no blood. And then the gays will realize that you kinda have to have straight people around here or else you’re all gonna die.

Were you aware that if homosexuals are allowed to marry that this would lead to the legalization of polygamy and bestiality? Ankarlo explains this, of course. What set this one off was the same-sex marriage of a teacher in San Francisco which was before Prop 8 was passed. Ankarlo went on to tell us how God has the city of San Francisco on his “To Kill” list (from 10-13-08):

It is San Francisco after all. How it has not fallen off into the bay is beyond me, but apparently God is busy doing other things right now.

Did you notice a common theme in some of these clips? Hanging a gay guy…Stopping blood donations to kill all homosexuals…Divine mass murder of gay-friendly cities. This has to be as bad as it gets.

By the way, I spiced up the interludes between Ankarlo’s rants just to make it exciting. I hope you enjoy it.

For those that liked this video, here’s a bonus remix with some new characters for Ankarlo to play with and also new music. Yeah, it’s random.

Supporting the Second Amendment is one thing. And saving children from abuse is one thing. But do six year-olds have Second Amendment rights? Is it even safe for six year-olds to wield a gun? Should six year-olds take the law into their own hands? Trigger-happy Darrell Ankarlo seems to say Yes to all of these (from 2-20-09):

If this little 6 year-old could get a gun, I would help her aim it…I think I could go to court and a jury of my peers would say ‘Mr Ankarlo, we’re going to give you a car because you helped a little kid shoot somebody who was doing something this diabolical.’

A new car? Since when do courts award prizes? I’m not sure if even courts in cartoons do this.

Ankarlo may be unsure…but I’m fairly certain that promoting kinder-vigilante murder on the radio is indeed wrong.